"Anybody," the Dutchman pleaded, "kindly take my shoes off. No, there's a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things."
I see Weishaupt and the Iron Boot. No wonder only five ever withstand the ordeal to become the top of the pyramid. Baron Rothschild won't let Rhodes get away with that. What is time or space, anyway? What is soul, that we claim to judge it? Which is real- the boy Arthur Flegenheimer, seeking for his mother, the gangster Dutch Schultz, dealing in murder and corruption with the cool of a Medici or a Morgan, or the mad poet being born in the Newark hospital bed as the others die?
And Elizabeth was a bitch. They sang "The Golden Vanity" about Raleigh, but none could speak a word against me. Yet he received the preference. The Globe Theatre, new drama by Will Shakespeare, down the street they torture Sackerson the bear for sport.
Christ, they opened the San Andreas Fault to hide the most important records about Norton. Sidewalks opening like mouths, John Barrymore falling out of bed, Will Shakespeare in his mind, my mind, Sir Francis's mind. Roderick Usher. Starry Wisdom, they called it.
"The sidewalk was in trouble," the Dutchman tried to explain, "and the bears were in trouble and I broke it up. Please put me in that room. Please keep him in control."
I can hear it! The very sounds recorded by Poe and Lovecraft: Tekeli-li, tekeli-li! It must be close.
I didn't mean to throw the bottle, mother. I just wanted your attention. I just wanted attention.
"Okay,' the Dutchman sighed. "Okay, I am all through. Can't do another thing. Look out, mama, look out for her. You can't beat Him. Police. Mama. Helen. Mother. Please take me out."
I can see it and it can see me. In the dark. There are things worse than death, vivisections of the spirit. I should run. Why do I sit here? The bicycle and the tricycle. 23 skiddoo. Inside the pentagon, the cold of interstellar space. They came from the stars and brought their images with them. Mother. I'm sorry.
"Come on, open the soap duckets," the Dutchman said hopelessly. "The chimney sweeps. Take to the sword."
It is like a chimney without end. Up and up forever, in deeper and deeper darkness. And the red all-seeing eye.
"Please help me up. French Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone."
I want to join it. I want to become it. I have no more will of my own. I take thee, old whore Death, as my lawful wedded wife. I am mad. I am half mad. Mother. The bottle. Linda, schlurped, sucked down.
Unity.
A nine-year-old girl named Patty Cohen lived three miles down the coast from the Drake estate, and she went mad in those early morning hours of April 25. At first, her parents thought she had gotten hold of some of the LSD which was known to be infiltrating the local grammar school and, being fairly hip, they fed her niacin and horse doctor's doses of vitamin C as she ran about the house alternately laughing and making faces at them, howling about "he's laying in his own piss" and "he's still alive inside it" and "Roderick Usher." By morning they knew it was more than acid, and months of sadness began as they took her to clinics and private psychiatrists and more clinics and more private psychiatrists. Finally, just before Chanukah in December, they took her to an elegant shrink on Park Avenue, and she had a virtual epileptic fit in the waiting room, staring at a statue on the end table and screaming, "Don't let him eat me! Don't let him eat me!" Her recovery began from that day, and the sight of that miniature representation of the giant Tlaloc in Mexico City.
But three hours after Drake's death, George Dorn lay on his bed in the Hotel Tudor, holding a phone to his ear, listening to it ring. A young woman's voice on the other end suddenly said hello.
"I'd like to speak to Inspector Goodman," said George.
There was a momentary pause, then the voice said, "Who's calling, please?"
"My name is George Dorn, but it probably wouldn't mean anything to the Inspector. But would you ask him to come to the phone please and tell him I have a message for him about the case of Joseph Malik."
There was a constricted silence, as if the woman on the other end of the phone wanted to scream and had stopped breathing. Finally she said, "My husband is working just now, but I'll be glad to give him any message you have."
"That's funny," said George. "I've been told Inspector Goodman's duty hours are noon to 9 P.M."
"I don't think it's any of your business where he is," the woman suddenly blurted. George felt a little shock. Rebecca Goodman was frightened and she didn't know where her husband was: something in the tone of her last three words revealed her mental state to George. I must be getting more sensitive to people, he thought.
